Wednesday, August 17, 2016

In the summer of 2013, Muslim Brotherhood members and supporters occupied Rabaa Square, eastern the capital city of Cairo to protest the removal of Morsi from power. The international media used the term “Rabaa Strike” as a reference to the gathering, which continued for 40+ days.

Around the 30th day on strike, news spread about weapons being smuggled into the strike and militias of Mojahdeen being recruited to use those weapons and train other protesters on using them. MB leaders, hiding inside the strike camp, told the media that they have no weapons and the strike is entirely peaceful.

Therefore, a delegation composed of eighteen representatives from local human rights organizations was formed to check the facts about whether there are weapons inside the strike. After taking the permission of MB leaders, the delegation went on a visit to Rabaa Strike camp on the first of August, i.e. only 13 days before the evacuation of the strike by police forces.

Ironically, the managers of the strike, namely Ahmed Elmoghier and Abdel Rahman Ezz, prevented the human rights delegation from entering the strike camp. They physically attacked members of the human rights delegation and forced them to leave before seeing anything!As a result, the issue about the existence of weapons in Rabaa Strike remained a matter of controversy.

Some of us, local human rights activists, who monitored the evacuation of the Rabaa Strike by police forces on August 14th, reported that there were several kinds of weapons and bombs in the strike. I saw them with my own eyes. As an eyewitness, I confirm that the evacuation of the strike was not a massacre against unarmed civilians, as some international media claims. It was a guerrilla war between illegitimate armed militias and the police forces, who were doing their job of protecting law and order.

The first person to fall dead on that bloody morning was not one of the strikers, but the young policeman who held a microphone asking the protesters to leave strike camp through the opened safe exits. Other 62 policemen were killed by direct shots in the head and chest during the day. For sure, they did not kill themselves! They were killed by the armed militias inside the strike. Those militias also led to the death of so many innocent mind-washed strikers, whom they used as human shields to confuse the policemen.

In spite of the aforementioned facts, renowned media outlets and well-known international human rights organizations (e.g. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International) promoted the big lie about being it a peaceful strike and that the police forces committed a massacre against innocent helpless and unarmed strikers. Even the White House in the US issued a statement calling the Muslim Brotherhood a “non-violent” political group. Ironically, neither Human Rights Watch nor Amnesty International had representatives or researchers monitoring the evacuation or even the strike.

On the third anniversary of that horrible day, this week, Ahmed Elmoghier, who once prevented human rights delegation from checking on weapons at the strike as I mentioned above in full details, made some shocking confessions on his Facebook page. He told the full story of how they armed the protesters in Rabea and trained them to form militias. He was there; he was one of the two managers of the strike. His confessions are non-negotiable.

Why did Elmoghier decide to make such a confession? Why reveal this shocking piece of truth about the weapons at Rabaa Strike? Why now? These are the questions that I have been trying to investigate, over the past week. I found out that Elmoghier's confessions are loaded by three main messages and objectives, as follows:

1.He tried to make a statement to the defeated affiliates and sympathizers about the skills of his MB generation.

By speaking about the glories of his militias in Rabaa, Elmoghier wanted to push away the many fingers inside the group pointing at the face of his generation. They accuse the current MB youth of being too weak to keep the legacy of the 80 years-old group.

Since it was formed in 1928, the Muslim Brotherhood followed the strategy of building small and widespread militias by recruiting teens with high religious piety and potential to respond to the group’s mind-washing programs. As they grow older and stronger, they form their own secret brigades and wait to be called on by MB leaders to implement some “holly” mission.

Those militias have been extremely weakened after the fall of the MB regime and the evacuation of the armed strike of Rabaa in 2013. They almost disappeared. One reason for their weakening is the inability of older MB leaders, either in prison or fleeing abroad, to continue funding the arming and training of young militias. Another reason is the inability of militia managers to communicate with their younger fellows, as most of them have been arrested while committing violent crimes, over the past two years, and many of them have traveled to join forces with ISIS in Syria and Hamas in Gaza.

2.He wanted to blackmail the leaders of the group, who long neglected him and his colleagues after fleeing Egypt.

The old leaders of the MB group, who made their way out of Egypt, got too busy with their own problems, to the extent that they totally forgot about Elmoghier and his colleagues in Egypt. There are strong conflicts among the old MB leaders, for more than a year now, over the leadership of the group and the decision-making process. The time-zone differences made proper communication among MB leaders, and between the leaders and younger members in Egypt, almost impossible. That magnified the feelings of disappointment among young MBs.

In that sense, Elmoghier’s confessions could be seen as a shout for attention; a rebellious message to those divided leaders, showing them that the young MBs are still an important factor in the equation. They still can make or break the international image of the group, with a single post on Facebook.

3.He wanted to give a message to regional terrorist organizations and their funders that the Muslim Brotherhood can join forces with them.

Egyptian military has been engaged in a brutal war with terrorist organizations in Sinai, including MB’s associate group of Hamas. Despite the running war, those terrorist groups can hardly stop or affect the economic development and political progress happening today in Egypt. That is because they do not have access to critical political and economic spots at the capital city of Cairo, or along the Nile Valley, where most citizens actually live a normal life.

The failure of terrorists to attack the central cities is the reason why Egypt has not been destructed as the case is in Syria, Yemen, or Libya. The one and only terrorist group with the ability to practice violence inside Cairo and governorates along the Nile Valley is the Muslim Brotherhood.

By openly bragging about the skilled militias of young MBs, Elmoghier is somewhat knocking the doors of regional terrorist organizations, whom are daydreaming committing attacks in the heart of Egypt. He wants to show them that the young MBs can do the job on behalf of them and, thus, get the funds he needs to revive and re-organize those militias.

Last, I wonder how media outlets and so-called human rights organizations, which defended the terrorist group of the Muslim Brotherhood for years, see Elmoghier’s confessions. How can they deal with the shame of spreading and supporting the lies of a terrorist organization? After these confessions, would they continue to support the terrorist group of the Muslim Brotherhood?

Monday, August 08, 2016

This week, Egyptians celebrated the first anniversary of launching The New Suez Canal, one of the prevalent national projects in our modern history. According to Vice Admiral Mohab Mamish, the Chairman of Suez Canal Authority, The New Suez Canal raised total revenues by 4% in US Dollars and 13.5% in Egyptian Pounds, in comparison to 2014 and 2015. That boom in Suez Canal revenues happened despite the recession in international trade, which reached its peak this year by 14%.

The miracle of The New Suez Canal goes way beyond its ability to rescue Egypt’s struggling economy, after five years of political unrest and decades of corruption. The huge project of digging the New Suez Canal and building new full-functioning communities around it was created in only one year with pure Egyptian funding and by the hands of Egyptian youth.

Despite the aforementioned optimism-inducing facts, some in the international community chose to see Egypt’s economic status through a pessimistic lens. The Economist, on the same day of celebrating the anniversary of The New Suez Canal, published an editorial with the shocking and totally irrelevant title “The Ruining of Egypt.” In complete contradiction to what we, Egyptians, are experiencing on the ground, the editorial claimed that Egypt is falling apart and the only way to save it is for President Elsisi to leave power and the world to stop providing Egypt with financial or military support.

To my understanding, this cannot be an editorial, but rather a careless recipe on “how to ruin Egypt.” The editorial’s so-called solutions were nothing but a series of dull incitements that will definitely ruin Egypt if implemented. Meanwhile, The Economist's editor failed to mention well-documented statistics or facts to support his inaccurate claims regarding the current economic strife in Egypt and the actual reasons behind hindering faster progress.

The editorial holds President Elsisi accountable for the heavy heritage of decades of corruption and masked inflation, which he is doing the unthinkable to reform. In addition, The Economist's editor ignored the simple fact that Egypt has been through a merciless economic and political roller-coaster since 2011 revolution. Nonetheless, the war on terror at our Eastern, Western and Southern borders and the violent crimes committed by the Muslim Brotherhood at cities along the Nile Valley limited our revenues from tourism and investment, and consequently augmented our economic exhaustion. That is why since his first day in power, Elsisi’s regime made economic reform and fighting corruption a top priority.

Under Elsisi, Egyptians witnessed government officials, from low rank civil servants up to ministers, being taken to jail and put on trials for practicing corruption. Last month, the parliament passed a new law to regulate civil service and limit the trajectory of decades of corruption in major governmental sectors. That is in addition to ongoing training programs for civil servants to improve their performance and skills.

In May, the government completed the construction of Al-Asmarat neighborhood, composed of 6258 housing units on the first phase and 4722 housing units on the second phase; in addition to schools, sports club, fully-equipped hospital, and service centers. The fully-furnished housing units were offered, for free, to the inhabitants of random housing areas in Cairo; i.e. those living in tin houses in dangerous areas with no infrastructure. Tens of similar projects are now being implemented in other governorates, and the priority is given to the long-ignored Upper Egyptian cities, where poverty rates are quite high.

In June, the government announced the opening of Elsisi Social Housing Project, which provides 400 thousand housing units in new cities all over Egypt. According to the program’s eligibility criteria, young people with limited income resources are given the priority for owning a housing unit for as low as nine thousand Egyptian Pounds in deposit, and three hundred Egyptian Pounds in monthly installments for ten years; compared to nearly three hundred thousand Egyptian Pounds one has to pay to get a similar housing unit at other housing projects.

Some chronic problems related to subsidized food and energy resources have literally vanished because of Elsisi’s policies. The nightmares of constant cutting of electricity and lack of gas at fuel stations have become stories from the past. The new system of supplying subsidized food commodities has increased competitiveness between suppliers, improved the quality of the food provided to citizens, and allowed the poor to fully benefit from the subsidy.

Those are just a few examples of many socio-economic reform measures that have been taken within only two years, since Elsisi came in power in mid 2014. The regime’s success in addressing those critical and chronic socio-economic problems in such a record time-frame is, perhaps, the reason why our Arab and European allies are still providing us with military and financial aid.

When providing military and financial support, our Arab and European allies are helping the Egyptian people and not the regime. They are not supporting Elsisi, personally, to remain in power despite the will of the Egyptians. They are not "dealing with the general they know” as The Economist's Editor claims. They are dealing with the man whom Egyptians voted for with 97% in democratic free and fair elections to represent them. Our allies, voluntarily, took the burden of helping Elsisi to solve Egypt’s problems only to make sure Egypt will remain standing on tough ground amidst a boiling region. It is a matter of inarguable fact that Egypt’s stability and security is an essential guarantee to the security and stability of both the Middle East and Europe.

I found the editorial’s incitement to Western countries to stop providing Egypt with expensive weapons, one of the most ironic statements ever! Look at the map, for God sake! We are located in the heart of the Middle East, surrounded by falling states from all corners, where terrorism and civil wars have become a statuesque. We are fighting brutal terrorist groups on our Eastern borders (Sinai), Western borders (ISIS in Libya), and even at our Southern borders (terrorist groups in Africa). If Egypt, in the middle of this chaos, does not need weapons to improve its military capacity, who does?!

What I find even more embittering is the editorial’s portrayal of the relationship between Elsisi’s regime and the Egyptian youth as a combat between adversaries. In complete blindness to the truth, the editorial claims that the regime “sees youth as a threat” because they were successful in toppling former regimes. As a young Egyptian, who dedicated her life to advocate human rights and liberal democracy, and a proud co-leader of revolutions against former autocratic and theocratic regimes; I felt particularly offended by those claims.

President Elsisi has always been a huge supporter to the dreams and aspirations of my generation, even before he becomes the president of the state. Elsisi was a member of the Supreme Council of Armed Forces (SCAF) when the 2011 revolution erupted. Along with SCAF members, he made the brave decision to abandon Mubarak and side with the young revolutionaries. If it was not for that decision by SCAF, I and other thousands like me could have been dead by now. In 2013, when young people launched Tamarod “rebellion” campaign against the theocratic regime of the Muslim Brotherhood, Elsisi, who was the Minister of Defense at the time, did not hesitate to risk his own life by abandoning Morsi and siding with the young protesters, once again.

As soon as he came to power, President Elsisi launched The Presidential Leadership Program (PLP) to qualify young people under 30 years-old to occupy political leadership positions in the near future. Five hundred young people, at least half of them are women, have already been admitted and are currently receiving their high quality education, for free, under the mentorship of state’s high-profile officials. Nonetheless, thanks to Elsisi’s policies in support of youth political participation, the number of elected youth in the current parliament hit a historical record of 185 elected members (i.e., 32.6%).

In parallel to youth political empowerment policies, Elsisi launched a youth economic empowerment program to support young business entrepreneurs, with an initial fund of 200 billion Egyptian Pounds. In 2015, Forbes ranked Egypt as one of the top ten countries around the world for start-up businesses.

The Economist’s editor claims that unemployment in Egypt reached 40%. I wonder where he got such an imaginary statistic! According to official statistics by The Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics, the unemployment rates dropped from 13.3% in 2014 to 12.7% by the end of 2015. Again, that was only possible due to the economic reform policies of Elsisi's regime.

The millions of Egyptians – including youth, women, and Coptic Christians – who elected Elsisi, two years ago, realize that the pursuit of liberal democratization and economic welfare is not a matter of voting. It is a long-term challenge, which we have agreed to take only when we found Elsisi; the strong reliable leader whom we trust can lead us through this tough path. We believe in Elsisi, as the right man, on the right time, for the right job. He has never failed us, neither before nor after he came in power.

I find it disappointing that The Economist’s Editor could not spare a few minutes of his precious time to investigate his inaccurate statistics and information, before publishing. The figures that I have mentioned in this article is only a few of the many well-known facts, which The Economist editor should have investigated before casually writing his shallow recipe on how to ruin Egypt, while ruining the magazine’s credibility in the process.